The creation of Italian design company Aviointeriors, the SkyRider is set to be shown off at next week’s Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in California.

Here’s how the designer describes the seat:

For flights anywhere from one to possibly even up to three hours … this would be comfortable seating… The seat … is like a saddle. Cowboys ride eight hours on their horses during the day and still feel comfortable in the saddle.

Yes, maybe professional cowboys and horse riders don’t mind being on a saddle all day. That doesn’t mean your average business traveler wants that huge bump pressing into their precious parts for several hours. One turbulent flight and we’re all asking for ice packs…

While Aviointeriors says several airlines have already expressed interest in the seats, an FAA spokesman is skeptical such a seat could work out in the real world:

While it’s not impossible, it’s difficult to conceive of a standing seat that would be able to meet all applicable FAA requirements and still be cost-effective.

How cheap would your ticket need to be to get you to saddle up on the SkyRider for a 3-hour flight? How about a 6-hour flight?

That’s basically what it is like. Can you imagine even shifting your weight in one of those? You can’t so much as lift one foot. You can’t shift your hips. You can’t turn to rest your head. They are made to hold you in ONE position, just ONE single position, for the duration of your time aboard.

This^. I wouldn’t even fly for free on this plane, no matter how short the flight.

Cowboys might sit in the saddle for hours, but 2 things…
a) They work up to being able to sit for hours in the saddle, they aren’t just dropped into the saddle from outer space, and expected to sit there all day, and
b) a saddle is much more comfortable than this thing looks.

Lets say a 747 can take around 100 tons of people. At around 175 pounds per person (average american 2007) that’s around 1142 people. At around 0.5 cubic meters per person, that takes around 600 cubic meters. But the 747 has 876 cubic meters of “passenger interior volume”. Thus, it appears that once you pack 1142 people into a 747, you start to worry about weight.

What I don’t get is that these seats don’t really seem any better because your legs still stick out.

A 747-8 has an operating empty weight of around 237 tons and maximum take-off weight of 487 tons, according to wikipedia. This leaves about 250 tons for fuel and payload. 175 lbs seems a fair estimate for average body weight. If we assume everyone has about 10 lbs of clothing and 40 lbs of luggage, that’s about 225 lbs per passenger. (but since 747’s typically fly international routes, more luggage is probably usually there). Present seats weigh about 300 lbs. This would put the 467 passenger capacity at about 122 tons. Assuming we eliminate half the weight of the seats, that might push the capacity up to 650 people if enough floorspace could be found.

Weight is always of significance. On an aircraft the size of a 747, every 100 lbs of additional weight counts for something like $500,000-$1,000,000 over the course of a 30-40 year service life, mostly in fuel costs.

I like the concept of laying down through a flight. But stacking people has the consequence of there being no orderly way to evacuate the plane (at least that can be conveyed in a brief safety speech).

As much as I agree, I think its much more difficult to secure people from continued forward motion in case of sudden deceleration (the only reason there are seatbelts on planes, currently – well and to hold you down in case of turbulence)

I’d have to see how comfortable this is to make a decision. The problem I would most likely have is that the seat isn’t deep enough for a comfortable fit. Meaning that it will constantly feel like you have to support your weight on your legs but you can’t actually stand up. Back pain and tired legs ahoy!

Also, just because they make the legroom requirements less, why do they feel that our arms get shorter too? I dislike those dinky armrests.

I have a saddle chair that I use for painting and drawing. My mother has one for quilting. Another artist I know has one for his studio as well. Saddle chairs can be quite comfortable if you’re willing to plunk down the cash for a good model.

That said, these would be pure torture. It took me a while to get used to long hours in my saddle chair and it has foot rungs for additional comfort. These look like roller coaster seats, which have probably rendered half the people who ride them sterile.

The main problem with these kinds of seats is the flexing that would occur. The safety of the seats comes in where, in the event of a ‘water landing’ or ‘crashing into the ground’, assuming the planes doesn’t explode, the seats have to be able to withstand the forces enough to stay intact and hopefully keep you alive. The frame of those seats look like they’re put together with spare parts from Ikea. They’d snap in half if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, they’ll flex just enough to crush your ribacage on the seat in front of you on the way forward, then snap back to decapitate the person behind you.

The only way around this would be to also ceiling mount the seats. It would have to be bolted into the frame so you wouldn’t have any overhead space either.

gc3160thtuk says you got your humor in my sarcasm and you say you got your sarcasm in my humorsays:

The seat poles and legs remind me of the really cheap/throwaway/low weight limit you buy at Wal-mart et./al./ where the poles of the furniture screw together and sorta/kinda look like they are made of metal but are actually made of hard plastic and spray painted silver. I wouldn’t trust the durability or ability of those pieces of crap chairs to hold the average person. Its why chairs aren’t made of that hard plastic crap.

Isn’t there still a weight limit on planes. So we can pack in another couple rows of people but then we need to calculate in the weight of the extra passengers and there luggage.

Also these seats look very narrow, even sitting next to a person who is a size 4 I would still consider it to close for my comfort let alone if I get the luck of sitting next to (or between) any one who is, however slightly, overweight.

Boeing slapped down Ryanair’s pseudo-serious venture in this direction by stating that there was no way that any of their aircraft would be rated to carry the weight of 50% more passengers and they’re luggage. The only way I could see it was to split the plane into 2 classes: super-premium, lay flat bed-seats and ultra-economy standing room only. So instead of 20 First, 60 Business, and 200 economy, you’d have 80 ultra-first class and 200 dismal economy…

1. She doesn’t look comfortable there & it appears she’s supporting her weight with her legs. That’s just not possible for any length of time.
2. There’s no seat cushion to use as a flotation device in case of a water landing.
3. Complete agreement that this particular seat is only suitable for women.

Your answer: It wouldn’t work for short people at all. Just think how terrible it would be for a short man. By the end of the flight his scrotum would be necrotic from lack of blood perfusion. Their claim that cowboys can be in the saddle all day doesn’t apply to that product; saddles don’t have that narrow hump in the middle. No fracking thanks.

It’s not suitable for women, either. Pressure on the vulva and urethra can lead to irritation and infections. Girls and women used to get bladder infections and vaginal infections all the time in the 80s from wearing those jeans that were so tight you needed a pair of pliers to get the zipper fastened.

My take is that they would eventually phase out flying larger people.
They can fit 2 smaller (or normal) seats in what would most likely require a larger and possibly modified bigger person seat.
More chairs = more fares!

The problem with these seats is that I can’t see them being viable for younger kids… too young to be held by the mother but not tall enough to fit properly in the seat and be properly secured. in a chair, it doesn’t matter at all how tall you are, but once you start lining people up by standing is that the restraint would be around a young kids neck and not their waist.

Ummm, the flight could be free or they could pay me to fly and I still wouldn’t use those things. Cowboys don’t actually sit in the saddle the whole time – when the horse is moving, they’re using the stirrups to rise up a bit… So this isn’t really the same deal.

Simple solution – make the damn seats as big as first class. Charge more. Space them nicely. Treat customers with respect. When you lose their luggage – own up to it, and pay for it.

Last time I got on a horse, I sat with my legs spread quite a bit more than that. And, I didn’t slide forward to catch myself by the lady bits on the front of the saddle.

Last I checked, there are horses in Italy, so why do they somehow think “suspended by the crotch” is equal to riding in a saddle?

And, yeah, that woman looks like she is in pain. However, a reason she is “holding herself up by her legs” like most people pointed out *could* be due to her modeling and not the seat. Models never sit comfortably, they have to hold their bodies in ways that don’t cause any kind of “distortion”, including the fact that your legs squish out when you sit down. It’s probably still the fault of the seat, but there is more than one explanation for how she is holding her body.

I actually don’t mind the seats. I am thin enough to fit, and I like to sit perfectly straight (which is hard to do in the typical airline seat). If I could get a discount by using this seat on short flights, I totally would do so.

You know, every time people hear the words ‘Italian’ and ‘designer’ together, they automatically assume it’ll be posh, sophisticated, fancy, modern, all that jazz. Maybe they should stick to handbags….

How does this save them any room? The upper thighs still sit parallel to the floor, so the space between seats is still limited by the length of the thigh. I don’t see how this solves the problem of trying to fit more seats onto a plane.

If you look closely at the photo (especially the back row), it looks like your legs are supposed to fit UNDER the seat of the person in front of you. The model’s legs aren’t exactly horizontal, they’re angled, and the seat appears to be at the same angle, but higher.

So in addition to being horribly uncomfortable, you’ll now be getting a free “kick” massage from your fellow passengers, just like at the movies!

Actually just a few days of riding…your muscles will adjust. Its your thighs and gluteals that are stressed from riding due to the fact that non riders who go riding tense up and grip the saddle with their thighs. People who don’t ride are usually nervous and tense about riding to begin with. So hence…they get “saddle sore”

How would this work for the folks who need an extra wide seat now (the American traveling public). Do they get an extra wide saddle to ride on? How about a pregnant passengers; belly support for them? Do we get cowboy hats for riding the airline saddle? Will there be stirrups?

Can someone please explain the purpose of the bump on the seat? Because I just don’t get it o-o Is it supposed to keep you from sliding off or something? Why can’t it be normal shaped?

I have ridden a horse both with and without a saddle. I’m female. My girly parts hurt SO much riding bareback on a horse with a bony spine similar to that hump, that I cannot even begin to imagine how much agony a guy would be in after several hours jammed against that thing. :o

My husband spent 10 days in the hospital with pulmonary blood clots caused by riding in a car long hours with his legs in one position. He nearly died. These seats don’t appear to give the ‘rider’ a way to stretch or move.

Good thing the ADA will never allow this in the US. Airlines are expected to make reasonable accommodations for disabled passengers. Good luck getting anyone that can’t support their own body weight into those seats, not to mention amputees.

As someone who has ridden horses, and had several terrible things happen when doing so, no way would I ride in a plane with this bullshit. Telling me riding in this seat is akin to riding a horse for 8 hrs does not make we want to sit on this muh fsukin seat. It reminds me how 1 horse rammed my face into tree branches after repeatedly and purposely attempting to step into holes in the field and how the other horse dragged the entire right side of my body against the metal of the round riding ring when it wasn’t busy slamming my right side against the ring rails causing my arm and leg to swell up a lot. So yeh don’t think I’m setting foot on a plane with that crap. Next up will be Ryan Air putting in an order for these to retrofit all of their current planes.

ive ridden stand-up rollor coasters with similar designs. Im somewhat tall (6′ 3″) so it wasnt terrible for me, but thats mostly becasue the force of the ride pushes against the seat to keep the weight off your crotch. I think this would be slightly better than standing on a bus ride, which I have done many manhy times.

Id probably give it a shot. Plane rides are much less bumpy than bus rides, and Ive had to stand for 8+ hours at work before, so doesnt seem like a big deal, especially for the 30-45 minute flights I take from island to island in hawaii.

I’m not in any way trying to say you are wrong, but the percentage of people like you, who think this might be okay for them on some short flights at least, is probably pretty damn low. The only time I would even consider a seat like this, personally, is if it was on an evacuation vehicle and a category 5 hurricane was bearing down.

I’ve got stubby little legs, and I’d be concerned that they’d just kind of hang off the little butt-shelf chair and fall asleep. If there was a place to put my feet up on the back of the seat in front of me, I might try it.

If I’m looking at the picture correctly, the passenger’s legs would actually slide up under the saddle of the person in front of them. Dear God, I alread hate it when some fat SOB yanks on the back of my seat when the get up to go to the can, but now I’m going to get a prostate massage from the knee of the passenger behind me.

In general I don’t mind airlines offering cheaper seating options (it just makes flight available to more people), with one caveat: some businesses/schools/etc. *require* you to take the cheapest available seating when traveling. If I want to save myself a few bucks, fine, but if you tell me I have to go? I want a real chair.

These would be harder to keep bolted into the floor in a crash, since they’re taller, putting the weight (force) further from the attachment point (fulcrum), making these more likely to rattle around the cabin in a crash, hurting people more than conventional seats.

And no, I wouldn’t want to ride on one of these, not for any length of time. I’m squished into the short leg space of standard seats as it is now; why would I want even LESS space??
I like the height of the back – standard seats are uncomfortably short – but the seat & arm rests are dinky.

I’m not a professional cowboy or anything, but I know that after being on a quarter horse for any extended period of time can seriously blister your butt. I’m sure thats more due to the movement on the saddle as opposed to the shape, but I would still prefer a seat without a raised crotch on an airplane.

Wow, I actually work in a crash test facility that performs lots of certification testing on aircraft seating. Me and my co worker saw this the other day and agreed, that thing would not pass a horizontal test. I also would think that the saddle seat would play hell with down testing. The FAA approved dummies are made to be sitting down flat, I don’t know if they would even fit in one of those.

LOL LOL LOL LOL!
:-P
Your comment (once I got control of my laughing and my bladder)
is terrifiying prophetic. They will try anything for MORE profit.
We just have to say NO! Loudly and in gigantic numbers.

Seats aren’t needed if they’d strap us into harnesses attached to large loops. Then they could hang us on hooks, rotate us in, around, & out like clothes at dry cleaners plus do an auto release dumping us on our butt at the plane’s door.

I hate this and I’ll never buy a ticket to fly and sit in a seat like this. It would probably cut my business travel down significantly. And I’m claustrophobic – at least enough that the idea of this gives me chills.

OK, Italian designed, we can understand that, heck they’re a bit “off-the-wall”. Now we all have to think about how many of the general population in Italy actually travel by air, anywhere. My great aunt Lena (she’s 92) came over “on the boat”), in 1936, hasn’t traveled outside of her home town since. Never will you get her or anybody else in our family in an airplane. I have to travel for work on aircraft of all types. My family think I’m nuts. So the message here is the folks outside of Milan who came up with this design probably never stepped on an aircraft. My uncle Mario says: “Bobby, you gotta take-a-the train, if the airplane doesn’t crash dem seats are going to take your manhood away!!”

First off, she looks like she is about to slide right out of her chair, and with a few bumps from turbulance that front part could not be comfortable for a woman either, we do have sensitive parts as well.
Secondly, I was laughing so hard at the other posts, I was darn near in tears, which is why I signed up to post. You are a funny group! Absolutely true and hysterical comments!!!!!

OK…I doubt this seat will ruin your crotch. I do ride horses at horse shows and am in the saddle for hours at a time. Now if you really think about it…mens genitals are out in front, so the bump isn’t going to crush anything valuable. Now what I think would be awful is that some people can get a nerve palsy from pressure on the nerves of the legs. I really don’t want to fly like this either…even tho I ride in a saddle for hours at a time, but I’ll be darn if I am flying this way too. Also …. 23″ pitch….no thank you.

I boycott any airline (even for business, I have some pull)
that has anything other than 1st or Business Class seating
on the plane. They still have to fill seats and if you hit ‘em
right where this contraption does, they will give you a coach
price for a business class seat. All you have to do is make
it look like you’re flying on business as a rep of some company
and be really loud about it. They cave immediately because
they don’t want you whining about them to those that hold the
pursestrings at your organization. Lots of lost business hurts.